As governments compete to attract investment amid economic fragmentation, trust is increasingly viewed as a strategic asset. Yet business trust is often discussed as a matter of perception: whether firms say they trust government and public institutions. This raises a more fundamental question: can we measure whether institutions justify business trust?

ACI’s webinar, “How Do Governments Earn Business Trust? Measuring Institutional Trustworthiness Across Economies”, held on 9 July 2026, introduced the Institutional Trust Index, a new measure of institutional trustworthiness constructed from 265 selected indicators in the World Bank’s Business Ready dataset. Covering 101 economies, the index benchmarks the objective institutional qualities that support business trust across five dimensions: accessibility, quality, accountability, transparency, and procedural fairness.

Beyond producing an aggregate score, the Institutional Trust Index serves as a diagnostic framework for identifying where institutional trustworthiness can be strengthened. Looking ahead, future research can extend the framework by incorporating stakeholder trust perceptions and technical standards and conformance foundations to provide a fuller assessment of how trust is built, recognised, and operationalised in trade and business.

Key Highlights:

1. Singapore ranks 3^rd in the Institutional Trust Index, supported by exceptional performances in the accessibility and quality dimensions, while also scoring above the global average across the remaining dimensions. This suggest that its trusted-hub reputation is supported by broad-based institutional strengths rather than a single area of performance.

2. Institutional trustworthiness varies across ASEAN economies, reflecting differences in institutional capacities, legal and administrative systems, public service structures, and development contexts. At the same time, this variation highlights opportunities to strengthen institutional trustworthiness, interoperability, and shared benchmarks across the region.

3. Institutional trustworthiness is positively associated with broader economic capabilities such as labour productivity and GDP per capita, suggesting that institutional trustworthiness is connected to the institutional foundations commonly found in more productive and developed economies, and not just an abstract governance concept.

4. A fuller trust framework requires additional layers. Stakeholders’ perceptions and the technical standards and conformance infrastructure are not yet captured in the current index. Future work can synthesise these factors into a more comprehensive trust framework.

By MA, Qi Xiang